Single reviewsThe Other Side Reviews

Future Theory – Hang Your Hat (2021)

Crossing Border is a long-running music and literature festival held every year in The Hague, Netherlands. It centres on combining all kinds of modern musical genres and literature. The former often comes along with single artists. Yet crossing borders or combining elements of different genres is itself a long-running process with music artists, very often with mixed results. What could be the problem?

To be able to mesh different genres, even within a single musical form like rock, involves being fully immersed and knowledgeable of the genres you are attempting to combine. Otherwise, your results could be described with a single term – a complete mess. In that respect, combining genres can be a tricky proposition for emerging artists. They need not only to know what they are doing, but they need to be capable to come up with something that actually sounds good. That is where Future Theory, a new and emerging band from Lincolnshire, UK, comes into the (sound) picture.



‘Hang Your Hat,’ a lead single from their first album is a song where they attempt to combine all those psychedelic sounds from the past, pass them through a Brit-pop filter (akin maybe to what initially Stone Roses came up with), and bring it up to current standards. Frankly, they are possibly on their way to doing so. Focusing more here on the moodier aspect of psychedelia, with its distant fuzz guitar sound and equally moody vocals, Future Theory shows that they actually know the past of the music they are creating quite well, indeed. Yet, ‘Hang Your Hat’ is not simply stuck in the past, it is the psych/Brit-pop sounds being adapted for current times and possibly for the future. Maybe the band’s future theory is working after all.

For more from Future Theory check out their Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.